Well, you're kinda halfway there tfwfh. In the Adventure Companion there is a trick called Nimble Guard that you can apply to Total Defense that gives you a +4 bonus to resist bull rushes and grapples. By RAW it only works against the first grapple check since you can't enter Total Defense while grappled, but I'd allow it since it sounds a bit better to me as a way of actively resisting a grapple even if you're outmatched rather than going limp and hope your allies can break you free before you get your back broken.

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"After all is said and done, more is said than done."- AesopMortality clarified in a single strike!

I don't even see it as going limp. At that point, you aren't playing to win, your playing to not lose.

Or should those be your only options in a grapple? Your either trying to pin your opponent or trying to break free? Because you really can't make an Athletics/Grapple check with the sole purpose of trying to maintain the status quo.

"Yay, I won the Grapple check!""Damn, you going to break free?""No""Oh, your going to pin me.""No, I just wanted to keep things like they are now..."

However you want to explain it in-character, I'm more interested in that the player gets to do something to react to the current predicament he's in, rather than just forfeiting his rounds and waiting for the rest of the party to save his ass. It reduces the feeling of complete helplessness which is seldom fun, without being particularly overpowered IMO. But as mentioned, by RAW this little trick doesn't work, so it's purely a house rule issue.

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"After all is said and done, more is said than done."- AesopMortality clarified in a single strike!

I don't even see it as going limp. At that point, you aren't playing to win, your playing to not lose.

Or should those be your only options in a grapple? Your either trying to pin your opponent or trying to break free? Because you really can't make an Athletics/Grapple check with the sole purpose of trying to maintain the status quo.

"Yay, I won the Grapple check!""Damn, you going to break free?""No""Oh, your going to pin me.""No, I just wanted to keep things like they are now..."

I just hear the lispy guy from Family guy "Hey there ogre, I see you're trying to kill me. I can't let you do that. Maybe you can kill me later. How does that sound?"

I'm bad about starting a reply, taking a nap, and coming back to finish it. I saw your post and had things that might be useful to say before I shut up. I think it's perfectly reasonable to not apply a grapple benefit when you've earned one and it's supported by the language of the rules. It's less reasonable to refuse to make a check because you're going to lose. Again, grappling has this unique ongoing quality. I'd think at the end of the delay you forfeit your action and thus have a 0 athletics check. There's probably room for a few tricks that change the skill you use in a grapple, at least defensively.

The problem with your reading is that the defender in the initial grapple check is not taking an action, they're opposing a check.

Go back and read this line:

Quote from: LeftTheTheOffDefender

Note that I'm not referring to the initial check as defender isn't under the limitations of the grapple rules until after he fails it.

The entire post is clearly about what happens in a grapple. The initiating Athletics check does not take place within a grapple and thus has nothing to do with the point I'm making. You are not under the restrictions of a grapple when you make this check. If the defender wins this check, he's free to do as he pleases because he's not in a grapple.

According to your interpretation, when a character is the target of a threaten action, they should loose a standard action on their turn since they burned that rolling Resolve. Same with Taunt and Sense Motive.

Yes, that's a direct consequence of my interpretation because being threatened places you in the posturing state that lasts from round to round and requires the participants to make full-action opposed Chest-bumping checks. Taunt has the same sort of thing but involving rubber and glue and what sticks to who.

Oh, wait. I never claimed that opposing a check was any sort of action. I claimed that the "state" of "grappling" imposes a limitation on what actions are possible. Let's look at the relevant sentence in the rule book.

Quote from: FC2nd

Finally, the only non-free action any grapple participant may take is an opposed full-action Athletics check, with the bigger character gaining a +2 bonus per Size category of difference....In all cases, the cooperative check rules are used to determine the results (see page 66).

In my interpretation, which is mine, grapplers participate in a single Athletics check each round. Others say one check per side. That's certainly a reasonable interpretation and may be the correct one as it seems to be the common one. But I think my interpretation is better for several reasons:

1) It's always a cooperative check so at most you should check once per side.2) The grapple check is an opposed action that can be won by any participant. Multiple checks allow a single character to benefit from multiple full actions in a single round. An optimized grappler can begin a grapple, pin his opponent, and then tie him up in the space of a single round, ending his turn outside of the grapple. This is more effective than continuing to grapple in most cases as the opponent must spend a round (or more) escaping from his bonds while the grappler is free to move on to another target.

3) The failure rate for non-optimized grapplers skyrockets. 4) Adding a third side exacerbates both of the previous problems. Rare, admittedly.5) In global thermonuclear war, the only winning move is not to play. This should not be true of grappling. You shouldn't be able to choose whether or not to make a check in an active grapple. Delaying until you lose your action or otherwise not acting in the grapple should be the same as getting a check of 0 plus your size bonus.6) A better use of delay is to delay when the grapple is resolved. That's useful when you have a friend outside the grapple who can kill or incapacitate your opponent. Plus it makes sense as standing your ground.

Hopefully now you understand where I'm coming from and can disagree with the argument I actually made.

Also, Grapple is a full action, not a full round action. Full actions consist of 2 half actions. Full round actions would resolve on your next initiative count. The only full round actions are casting some spells.

A reasonable person might note that the phrase "full round" appears once in my post and that I did not in fact claim that a grapple was a full round action. A careful person might see that each time I referred to a grapple check I said it was a full action and this didn't need to be corrected. But yes, that "full round" should have been a "full action." Also, I left out the word "the" before "defender" in the sentence I pasted from my original post. Mea Culpa

As for grappling actions, that's how I do it. It works well for me. Everyone, if you continue with your double-grapple-checking ways, I will nonetheless continue to hold you in the same esteem and respect that I do now and would humbly request the same of you.

I don't even see it as going limp. At that point, you aren't playing to win, your playing to not lose.

Or should those be your only options in a grapple? Your either trying to pin your opponent or trying to break free? Because you really can't make an Athletics/Grapple check with the sole purpose of trying to maintain the status quo.

"Yay, I won the Grapple check!""Damn, you going to break free?""No""Oh, your going to pin me.""No, I just wanted to keep things like they are now..."

While I think you're taking the piss here, that's actually a valid tactic. You often want to just hold on and do as little as possible while your opponent exhausts themselves before you start to counter (especially against a stronger opponent who is otherwise roughly equal to yourself).

Not really something the rules support (since you have to actually win to fatigue your opponent), but not as silly as it sounds at first pass. Of course I may have mistaken your post's intent, in which case my bad.

There's probably room for a few tricks that change the skill you use in a grapple, at least defensively.

I always liked that in D&D you could use Escape Artist to oppose the grapple check, but your only option after that was to escape the grapple. Not sure how that would translate to FC (what skill governs just being slippery and able to squeeze?), but I think something along those lines could work. Prestidigitation almost works, but seems a little squiffy to me (nimble fingers = hard to hold?). I like the idea of a Resolve based grapple check where you let your opponent fatigue themselves (only option being to inflict subdual damage) too.

Yes, that's a direct consequence of my interpretation because being threatened places you in the posturing state that lasts from round to round and requires the participants to make full-action opposed Chest-bumping checks. Taunt has the same sort of thing but involving rubber and glue and what sticks to who.

Oh, wait. I never claimed that opposing a check was any sort of action. I claimed that the "state" of "grappling" imposes a limitation on what actions are possible. Let's look at the relevant sentence in the rule book.

Quote from: FC2nd

Finally, the only non-free action any grapple participant may take is an opposed full-action Athletics check, with the bigger character gaining a +2 bonus per Size category of difference....In all cases, the cooperative check rules are used to determine the results (see page 66).

In my interpretation, which is mine, grapplers participate in a single Athletics check each round. Others say one check per side. That's certainly a reasonable interpretation and may be the correct one as it seems to be the common one. But I think my interpretation is better for several reasons:

You make a convincing argument sir. Also, funny, at several points. It does bring up an interesting problem regarding initiative. That is, on whose init do things happen? There are a number of grapple benefit that affect things outside the grapple. Disarm, Move, Screaming Club, etc. In these cases, it becomes important to know when in initiative they happen, and if both characters are making the one same full action opposed grapple check, when does the result of the check take effect? On the winner's initiative? On the attackers? Or the defenders? Or the last initiative of any of the grapplers? Or the first?

Ok, but imagine this situation. You have a grapple. The grappler goes first in initiative, followed by the held grapplee. The grappler makes his opposed check, rolls an error which his opponent activates, and the grapplee just waltzes out of the grapple. Now, it's the (former) grapplee's turn. He's not grappling any more, and so not bound by the grappling restrictions on what he can do. Does he get to take his normal actions?

But if the grapplee had simply won the opposed check, then he would break free at the end of his turn, having spent his whole action in the grapple, thus probably just getting grappled again on his opponent's next turn, which comes before the poor grapplee can take any actions? And if the Grapplee had won with a critical success, basically the same situation?

No, the grapplee breaks free at the grappler's turn, since that's when the check happened at. The Grapple check is Full Action, not Full Round, so it resolves within one Initiative Count. And since opposing a check is a free action (for what I should hope is obvious reasons) the grapplee is free to act however he wishes when his Initiative Count comes around. If the grapplee won at his Initiative Count and chose to break the grapple, then yeah, there's nothing stopping the grappler from initiating a new grapple at his next Initiative Count. I don't believe there is anything that specifies what happens when you gain a critical success on the grapple check, so whatever happens is up to the GM.

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"After all is said and done, more is said than done."- AesopMortality clarified in a single strike!

You often want to just hold on and do as little as possible while your opponent exhausts themselves before you start to counter (especially against a stronger opponent who is otherwise roughly equal to yourself).

Exactly. This is basically what I am doing in a grapple when I Delay.

As an aside, let's separate the proposed house rules and RAW. By the RAW, if you are grappled, you can Delay until you forfeit your action without making an Athletics/Grapple check. The rules are pretty clear that you can take free actions, and Delay is a free action

If you don't like it and want to change the rules, that's fine. Since this topic is in Fantasy Craft and not License to Improvise, I just want players, particularly those who may be new to the game and to the boards, to know that most of this discussion is house rule territory.